How we count your impact
Every number on your Impact Report is counted from your own account. No estimates, no averages, no modelling. Here is the working.
The ground rules
Your account, nothing else
Each figure is counted from your own visits and purchases through CashBlack. Nobody else's shopping goes into your report.
Confirmed purchases only
A purchase counts once the brand confirms it. Pending purchases can still be cancelled or returned, so they wait. Rejected and cancelled purchases never count. Cashing out does not shrink your report.
A visit is a tap through
A visit is each time you tap through from CashBlack to a brand. It counts whether or not you buy.
UK time
Months, days and hours are counted in UK time, so a purchase at half past midnight on the 1st lands in the new month.
Empty beats made up
When a section needs more history than you have, it stays empty. You will never see a figure we had to invent.
Every figure, worked out
- Brands visited
- The number of different brands you have tapped through to. Ten visits to one brand count as one brand. The monthly chart counts the different brands you visited in each month.
- Brands supported
- The number of different brands you have at least one confirmed purchase with.
- Total purchases
- Every confirmed purchase, counted one by one. Two orders at the same brand count as two.
- Spend
- The order value the brand reports for each confirmed purchase, added up.
- Cashback
- The cashback on your confirmed purchases, added up. Cashback from CashBlack IRL pop-ups, referral rewards and other bonuses land in your wallet but sit outside this figure, because they are not purchases.
- Category spending
- Your confirmed spend split by each brand's category on CashBlack, across all time. Each brand sits in one category, the one it is filed under today, so the categories add up to your total spend.
- Momentum
- For each category, your spend in the last three calendar months (this one included) against the three before, as a percentage. Growth from nothing has no percentage, so a category you spent nothing in during the earlier three months is left out.
- Favourite cuisines
- Your confirmed purchases at brands tagged with a cuisine, grouped by cuisine and ranked by spend, then by number of orders. A brand with two cuisines counts toward both, so this section does not add up to your total. Brands with no cuisine, which is most brands outside food, are not in it.
- Where your money lands
- Your confirmed spend grouped by where each brand is based: its town or city when we have one, otherwise its postcode district (NW4 from NW4 4DJ). Each place sits at the average position of the brands in it. Brands with no location on CashBlack are left out. Locations come from Afrofiliate, the network behind CashBlack, and we never guess one.
- Founder heritage
- Where a brand's founder heritage is recorded, the brands you have bought from are counted by it. This describes the founders, not where your money went, and most brands have no heritage recorded yet.
- Loyalty and exploration
- Two scores from 0 to 1, over your last three calendar months. Exploration is the share of brands you bought from in those months that were new to you. Loyalty is the share of your purchases in those months made at brands you had bought from before. One counts brands and the other counts purchases, so both can be high. You need at least 3 confirmed purchases in those three months and at least one before them. Until then this stays empty, because every brand is new to a new member.
- Time of day
- When you tap through to brands, by hour in UK time. Your peak is the busiest three-hour window. Weekend share is the part of your visits that fall on a Saturday or Sunday. It is counted from visits, not purchases.
What "Black-owned" means here
Every brand in the CashBlack directory identifies as Black-owned. Self-identification is the definition, the same one in our FAQ.
Your report does not grade or score ownership. It counts the confirmed purchases you made through CashBlack, and CashBlack only sends you to brands in its directory.